Ideas and Strategies for Real-Time Personalization

As a Customer Success Manager here at Evergage, one of my favorite parts of our platform is segmentation. Aside from the important role segments play in targeting personalized experiences to different groups of people, they are hugely valuable for data analysis. Want to know who and how many visitors viewed a specific category in the last 30 days? Done. Want to understand who has visited the site for the first time today and bought at least $150 worth of product — all while visiting no more than 10 products all together and favoriting a specific category? Um, yes, but why would you need to?

The possibilities are virtually endless.

You can use segmentation to target specific groups of users in campaigns. You can compare different segments to understand the variance in behavior. You can even dive down into our “categories wheel” within each segment to understand which categories and sub-categories this particular segment is engaging with from a purchase, view, and time spent perspective. It’s really, really cool.

But how do you use all of this incredible information to your marketing advantage?

This is a question a lot of my clients ask me and it’s a good one. You have so much data that you can use to point arrows in the right direction to help you increase engagement and conversions — and ultimately provide better and more personalized experiences for your visitors.

The first step I typically take is to browse around a client’s website to identify key activities that a person can take to demonstrate engagement on the site. Is there a blog? Are there videos? Can customers leave reviews on products?

Once I’ve identified some key activities, I create a set of segments. For example, if there is a blog I create this type of segment:

Visitors who have viewed the blog at least one time for all time

Then I create the inverse of that segment:

Visitors who have NOT viewed the blog at least one time for all time

By comparing these two segments, I can see what kind of value the blog brings to this particular client’s site. For example, I can compare the conversion rate for both segments.

Depending on the results, I then have a little brainstorm session:

If the conversion rate is HIGHER for those who interact with the blog, let’s get more people visiting the blog for the first time by delivering personalized content recommendations on highly trafficked pages. I’d hypothesize that this kind of initiative would boost visitors’ conversion rates.

If the conversion rate is LOWER for those who interact with the blog, let’s get some personalized product or content recommendations on the blog posts so there is a more direct path to possible purchases.

Final Thoughts

To summarize at a high level, using segmentation to generate ideas for personalization campaigns can be accomplished by following these five simple steps:

Find key activities visitors can currently complete on your site

Create segments that speak to those activities and their inverse

Compare and contrast the metrics for these segments

Brainstorm ideas for personalization based on what you found

Execute!

You would be surprised at how easy it is. It’s a practice that can pay off in a big way. Good luck!